Derek Achong

A 49-year-old man of cen­tral Trinidad, con­vict­ed of mur­der­ing his 13-year-old neigh­bour in 2006, has scored a vic­to­ry in his bid to be re­moved from death row and be re-sen­tenced.

High Court Judge Frank Seep­er­sad yes­ter­day grant­ed an in­junc­tion quash­ing the death sen­tence Ronald Bis­nath re­ceived af­ter be­ing con­vict­ed of the crime in 2014.

Jus­tice Seep­er­sad al­so or­dered that Bis­nath be re­moved from death row and placed in an ap­pro­pri­ate area of the prison, as de­cid­ed by the Prison Com­mis­sion­er, un­til his even­tu­al re-sen­tenc­ing.

Jus­tice Seep­er­sad said: “The claimant’s con­tin­ued de­ten­tion on death row is un­ac­cept­able and for each day that he re­mains on death row there is a con­tin­u­ing breach of his con­sti­tu­tion­al rights.”

Bis­nath was ac­cused of mur­der­ing Par­manand “Boyo” Per­sad, a for­mer stu­dent of the Ch­agua­nas Ju­nior Sec­ondary School, on Oc­to­ber 29, 2006.

Per­sad, who lived near Bis­nath at Crown Trace, En­ter­prise, Ch­agua­nas, was found mur­dered in a va­cant house that was be­ing ren­o­vat­ed. His throat had been slit.

Bis­nath was ar­rest­ed short­ly af­ter Per­sad’s body was dis­cov­ered and al­leged­ly con­fessed to the crime.

He ad­mit­ted that he lured Per­sad to the house and killed him af­ter the teenag­er re­peat­ed­ly heck­led and ha­rassed him.

Bis­nath lost his ap­peal be­fore the Court of Ap­peal in 2018 with the Unit­ed King­dom-based Privy Coun­cil dis­miss­ing his le­gal chal­lenge in Au­gust, last year.

In his law­suit, Bis­nath claimed that al­though the death penal­ty could not be ex­e­cut­ed against him as the five-year pe­ri­od for per­form­ing the same in the Ja­maican case of Pratt and Mor­gan had ex­pired, his sen­tence was not of­fi­cial­ly com­mut­ed and he re­mained on death row.

In grant­i­ng the in­ter­im re­lief, Jus­tice Seep­er­sad not­ed that the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al ad­mit­ted that the death penal­ty could no longer ap­ply to Bis­nath.

While Jus­tice Seep­er­sad not­ed that there may be pub­lic crit­i­cism over Bis­nath’s case and oth­ers like it which are due to come up for hear­ing in the next few months, he not­ed the court’s in­ter­ven­tion was re­quired.

As part of his de­ci­sion in the case, Jus­tice Seep­er­sad re­ferred Bis­nath’s re-sen­tenc­ing to the Supreme Court Reg­is­trar for it to be ur­gent­ly as­signed to a col­league in the Crim­i­nal Di­vi­sion of the High Court.

Jus­tice Seep­er­sad, who will con­tin­ue to pre­side over the as­pect of Bis­nath’s case in which he is seek­ing com­pen­sa­tion for breach­es of his con­sti­tu­tion­al rights, re­served April 20 to con­duct a site vis­it at death row cells at the Port-of-Spain State Prison.

He is sched­uled to host a case man­age­ment con­fer­ence on May 23.

Bis­nath was rep­re­sent­ed by Ger­ald Ramdeen, Wayne Sturge, Dayadai Har­ri­paul, and Ner­isa Bala. The AG’s Of­fice was rep­re­sent­ed by Nicol Yee Fung and Coreen Find­ley.